


Weak Link

by lawfulgayheel



Category: World Wrestling Entertainment
Genre: 2013, Injury Recovery, Kayfabe Compliant, M/M, Relationship Problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 08:36:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19353358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lawfulgayheel/pseuds/lawfulgayheel
Summary: Tensions come to a boiling point after the broken up Team Hell No struggles through some particularly rough singles matches.





	Weak Link

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a little under a year ago so i couldn't for the life of me tell you what match i was referencing.

Mortified was a mild descriptor for how Daniel felt, sitting in the trainer’s room, waiting for a verdict. In all his years in the industry, he never had a match called off due to injury. He’d tripped on his own feet and taken spills harder than the measly throw from Randy. Sure, he hit the barricade head on, but it wasn’t the first time. He felt fine. A little dizzy, sure, maybe just a touch concussed, but fine.

Time ticked on as he seethed. He couldn’t get his mind off that look on Randy’s face when the bell rang. As the viper helped him up, reassuring him it was okay, Daniel wanted to clobber him. If his brain would’ve connected to his limbs faster, he would’ve sent the other man through the announce table. Not that there was anything wrong with his brain from the fall, he was just having trouble processing everything. It wasn’t him, it was everyone else going too fast. All he knew was Randy was patting his head with the pity in his eyes reserved for reassuring a child who’d struck out in his first tee ball game.

Fidgeting with his hands, he kept glancing at the door. He wasn’t waiting for the doctor-- well, sure, he was, mostly. The sooner he got out of there the better. He was waiting for Kane. He was anticipating Kane. He wasn’t waiting for him because he wanted him there, he just knew his partner. Every time Daniel so much as got a bruise during a match, there was Kane, acting like it was the end of the world. It didn’t matter how banged up and rattled the demon was, he was always hovering over Daniel.

Kane could insist to hell and back he didn’t think Daniel was the weak link, but his actions spoke louder than his words. He treated his partner like a teetering stack of cards, or a scared animal, as if with the slightest rattling Daniel would fall apart or run away. Some days, Daniel thought his partner was just waiting for him to vanish into thin air.

Waiting and obsessing, Daniel grew even more frustrated. He could feel his blood boiling as he cobbled together the scathing words he would throw on his partner the second he walked his masked face through the door.

Kane never showed.

The doctors came and went, clearing Daniel to fight, but Kane remained absent. Daniel’s anger fizzled into…something. It didn’t fizzle out, exactly, he was still angry, with a side of confusion and-- was that disappointment? A teeny bit of concern, even? Where was Kane?

Oh.

That’s right.

Kane had a match against Dean that ended like most matches with a Shield member, with three men planting him into the floor. He had just barely recovered from Ryback throwing him through a table earlier that week, only to suffer another three-on-one assault.

He wasn’t in the trainer’s room, so it couldn’t have been that bad, Daniel reasoned with himself. So where was he? Why did it bother Daniel so much not to know? Team Hell No had all but dissolved. Whatever Kane did on his time off was his business. Daniel didn’t need to worry about him doing something to jeopardize their chances of winning.

That being said, they were a little more than just tag team partners, or they used to be. Were they still? He could never tell with Kane. Kane wasn’t the type to just come out and say things like that, without prompting. Daniel hadn’t been much in the mood for prompting of late. Not over that. Somewhere in his heart, he already knew the answer. Why bother asking?

The tension of all his uneasy, mixed up emotions drained out of him when he stepped into the locker room, and there he was, the big red monster. He was shoving a soft collar into a locker, his ungloved hand rubbing the back of his neck. Faced away from the door, the telltale welts scattered down his arms and across his shoulders were on display for his partner to wince at.

Closing the locker door, Kane turned. There was no flash of recognition in his eye as he fixed his gaze on Daniel, like he knew the other man was there, like he sensed him.

Daniel bit his tongue, trying to conjure up the right words. He had all manner of things he wanted to say when he was intent on giving the demon a piece of his mind in the trainer’s room, but they were lost to him. Looking at how banged up his partner was, he felt a wave of guilt for being hypothetically angry with him in the first place. It didn’t last long.

“Are you okay?” Kane spoke up first. “I heard about your match--”

The bomb of fury burst in Daniel’s chest. “Don’t ask me if I’m okay! Look at yourself! You’re a mess, and you’re gonna ask __me__ if __I’m__ okay?”

“I-- Yes?”

“No!” As per usual, he was shouting. Calmer, quieter, he repeated, “No. Stop worrying about me. I can take care of myself, alright? I don’t need you hovering over me because you think I can’t take a hit because I’m w--”

“Stop.” It was Kane’s turn to cut Daniel off.

He didn’t yell it, or have that exasperation that was so common in his voice recently. It was less of a harsh command and more of a firmly spoken plea.

“Just stop,” he repeated with even less edge to his voice than he started with.

Daniel waited, expecting him to say more. He even looked like he was trying to say more. He would open his mouth and begin forming a word, and then seemingly think better of it. Finally, he gave a little shake of his head, and walked past Daniel without sparing him a glance.

Though his brain said, “Good! Let him go! We don’t need him!” his body had other ideas. He put an arm out, startling Kane to a halt, forcing the larger man to look at him.

That single hand on Kane’s chest had the two more physically intimate than they’d been in weeks. There was a significant shift in mood in the empty locker room as they stared at each other, unmoving and silent. Kane’s eyes flickered back and forth between the hand on his chest and Daniel’s face. Surely he wanted to know why Daniel stopped him, but he wouldn’t ask. He wouldn’t break that rare moment where they were calmly existing together.

“Are you okay?” Daniel finally got the words he wanted out of himself.

“Yeah,” Kane sounded breathless as he nodded, eyes locked with Daniel’s. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m…”

Gaze unfaltering, he grabbed the hand on his chest, fingers coming together like puzzle pieces. The meager space between their bodies disappeared. It was just a single, light kiss, a little apology from each man to the other for the weeks upon weeks of discord. It was a small reassurance that, team broken up or not, they still had each other. Even if they weren’t on the same page, they were at least still in the same book.

Daniel threw his arms around Kane’s neck, and the one chaste kiss turned into more. Their bodies and mouths pressed together like they couldn’t get close enough. Kane’s hands were sliding over Daniel’s back and hips, memorizing their shape. They stopped moving, gripping the backs of his partner’s thighs and lifting him up. The hot, desperate rain of kisses refused to let up. Just as Daniel’s rational mind was wondering exactly how far the demon planned to go, Kane stopped.

Daniel pulled back from the frozen face reluctantly. Kane’s eyes weren’t on him anymore. They were looking past him. Glancing over his shoulder, Daniel found himself facing one Randy Orton, who looked even more grim than usual.

“You know,” the man began.

He canceled whatever he was going to say, shaking his head and walking back out the door.

**Author's Note:**

> (i doubt anyone's paying attention to time stamps but i feel inclined to point out that i dont. write this fast. i just have a lot of writing backlog because hope and i have been writing and lobbing wrestling fanfic at each other for months.)


End file.
